lightly over the faces of the others as he chatted. Jake began to
relax a little.
The planter dealt him four to an open-ended flush, and he filled it
with the six of hearts. The civil servant, who had an insatiable
curiosity, called his raise to twenty pounds and sighed and muttered
mournfully as he paid the ivory chips into the pot and Jake swept them
away and stacked them neatly in front of him.
"Let's have a new pack-" smiled Gareth, lifting a finger for a servant,
and hope that it breaks your run of luck." Gareth offered the seal on
the new pack for inspection, then split it with his thumbnail and
unwrapped the pristine cards with their bicycle-wheel designs,
fanned them, lifted the jokers and began to shuffle, at the same time
starting a very funny and obscene story about a bishop who entered the
women's rest room at Choring Cross Station in error.
The joke took a minute or two in the telling and in the roar of
masculine laughter that followed, Gareth began to deal, skimming the
cards across the green baize, so that they piled up neatly before each
player. Only Jake had noticed that during the bishop's harrowing
experiences in the ladies" room, Gareth had blocked the cards between
shuffles, and that each time as he lifted the two blocks he had rolled
his wrists so that for a fleeting instant they had fanned slightly and
faced.
Guffawing loudly, the baron gathered up his hand and looked at it.
He choked in the middle of his next guffaw, and his eyelid started to
jump and twitch, as though it was making love to his nose. From across
the table came a loud hiss of indrawn breath as the planter closed his
cards quickly and covered them with both hands. At Jake's right
hand,
the civil servant's face shone like polished yellow ivory and a little
trickle of sweat broke from his thinning hairline, ran down his nose,
and dripped unheeded on to the front of his dress shirt, as he stared
at his cards.
Jake opened his own cards, and glanced at the three queens it
contained. He sighed and began his own story.
"When I was first engineer on the old Harvest Maid tied up in
Kowloon, the skipper brought a fancy little dude on board and we all
got into a game. The stakes kept jumping up and up, and just after
midnight this dude dealt one hell of a hand." Nobody appeared to be
listening to Jake's story, they were all too absorbed with their own
cards.
"The skipper ended up with four kings, I got four jacks and the ship's
doctor pulled a mere four tens." Jake rearranged the queens in his
hand and broke off his story while Gareth Swales fulfilled the civil
servant's request for two cards.
"The dude himself took one card from the draw and the betting went mad.
We were throwing everything we owned into the pot. Thanks,
friend, I'll take two cards also." Gareth flicked two cards across the
table, and Jake discarded from his hand before picking them up.
"As I was saying, we were almost stripping off our underpants to throw
it all in the middle. I was in for a little over a thousand bucks Jake
squeezed open the new cards and could hardly suppress a grin. All the
ladies were there. Four pretty little queens peered out at him.
"We signed IOUs, we pledged our wages, and the dude came right along on
the ride, not pushing the betting but staying right there."
Gareth gave the baron one card and drew one himself.
They were listening now, eyes darting from Jake's lips to their own
cards.
"Well, when it came to the showdown, we were looking at each other
across a pile of cash that came to the ceiling and the dude hit us with
a straight flush. I remember it so clearly, in clubs three to the
eight. It took the skipper and me twelve hours to recover from the
shock and then we worked out the odds on that deal just happening
naturally it was something like sixteen million to one. The odds were
against the dude and we went looking for him. Found him down at the
old Peninsula Hotel, spending our hard-won gold. We were preparing for
sea at the time. Our boilers were cold. We sat the dude on top of
them, and fired them.
Had to tie him down, of course, and after a few hours his knockers,
were roasting like chestnuts."
"By God," exclaimed the peer.
"How awful."
"Quite right," Jake agreed. "Hell of a stink in my engine room." A
heavy charged silence settled over the table all of them aware that
something explosive was about to happen, that an accusation had been
made, but most of them not certain what the accusation was,
and at whom it had been levelled. They held up their cards like
protective shields, and their eyes darted suspiciously from face to
face. The atmosphere was so tense that it pervaded the gracious
room,
and the players at the other tables paused and looked up.
I think," Gareth Swales drawled in crisp tones that carried to every
corner of the listening room, "that what Mr. Barton is trying to say
is that somebody is cheating." That word, spoken in these
surroundings, was so shocking, so charged with dire consequence, that
strong men gasped and blanched. Cheating in the club, by God, better a
